Charming! Medicine is for us Westerners!

What can one say?

"Right up there in the annals of multinational corporations doing heinous things in the name of obscene profits comes the response of the German-based Bayer to India's unprecedented ending of the pharmaceutical giant's monopoly for a new, insanely expensive anti-cancer drug Nexavar - a brave move that allows a small Indian drug company to make a generic version of the drug that regular poor sick people can actually afford. One year of treatment with Nexavar, used largely in liver and kidney cancer cases, costs $96,000 in the U.S. and $69,000 in India, or 41 times the per capita income; India's Natco Ltd. made it for $177 a year. Outraged Bayer officials charged the Indian action allowing poor people to have their fancy drug was "essentially theft" and they will damn sure explore their legal options to the ends of the (white people's) earth to "defend our intellectual property rights." We know all about turning the other cheek and meeting hate with love, but still: May they one day need medicine they cannot get.

"We did not develop this medicine (Nexavar) for Indians," said Bayer CEO Marijn Dekkers at a little reported pharmaceutical conference. "We developed it for Western patients who can afford it."

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